Culture Contact

Drawing on ethnographic data collected in a coastal village in southwestern Madagascar, the work explores the concept of memory through a study of contemporary hospitality practices aimed towards western tourists and other outsiders. The key observation is that memory is shaped by the interactions between two forms of colonial legacy. One is defined by the socially inscribed memory of past relations with powerful outsiders, mediated through myth and oral history. The other is defined by socially incorporated practices formed in the pre-colonial and colonial realms of the 19th and 20th centuries (and hence constitute a memory of such pasts in the present), and that today shift in the context of contact with western tourists and other foreigners. The main argument is that socially inscribed memory provides a highly flexible operational metaphor to mediate and also reproduce the socially incorporated practice-memory of hospitality, especially when historical symbolic functions – for example domesticating royals, colonial administrators, settlers, merchants or clerics – are shifted into contemporary contact zones with western tourists.

This paper explores the role of public architecture in anchoring Cherokee communities to particular points within the southern Appalachian landscape in the wake of European contact in North America. Documentary evidence about Cherokee public structures known as townhouses demonstrates that they were settings for a variety of events related to public life in Cherokee towns, and that there were a variety of symbolic meanings associated with them. Archaeological evidence of Cherokee townhouses—especially the sequence of six townhouses at the Coweeta Creek site in southwestern North Carolina—demonstrates an emphasis on continuity in the placement and alignment of public architecture through time. Building and rebuilding these public structures in place, and the placement of burials within these architectural spaces, created enduring attachments between Cherokee towns and the places in which they lived, in the midst of the geopolitical instability created by European contact in eastern North America.

I am almost confident that most of you would not open the door to a Syrian refugee if you have the slightest doubt that this person could harm you in any way. I am also confident that this doubt and fear could be explained and dissolved and that inclusion could triumph.
In this paper, I posit that the similarity-attraction hypothesis, the integrated threat theory(ITT), the contact hypothesis, the common in-group identity model, and the mutual identity differentiation model could clarify some of the factors that are at stake when it comes to the inclusion and the integration of the Syrian refugees in host societies.

Le Roussillon est un espace entre mer et montagne situé à la croisée des populations de l’extrême sud de la Gaule et du nord-est de l’Ibérie. Une approche globale du territoire et des dynamiques de peuplement est réalisée afin d’appréhender l’évolution, la diversité spatiale et qualitative des vestiges archéologiques dans le temps.
Les données archéologiques disponibles sont revisitées à travers de nouvelles recherches de terrain (prospections, fouilles) afin de proposer une synthèse des connaissances. Ces données apportent des informations sur l’occupation et l’exploitation des ressources disponibles dans les espaces littoraux et dans les massifs pyrénéens. À l'aide des systèmes d'information géographique (base de données, SIG), l’analyse est menée en recherchant les articulations entre les ressources naturelles, les territoires d’habitats et les zones d’échanges économiques. Ces dynamiques sont confrontées à la réception et à la diffusion des céramiques d’importations issues des échanges avec le monde méditerranéen. Les flux commerciaux résultant d’études céramiques inédites permettent d’appréhender dans le temps les diversités culturelles et commerciales des populations et la nature des contacts de cultures.
Les échanges et les relations entre Grecs, Ibères (principalement) et populations locales sont développés à travers 6 études de cas menées sur les agglomérations littorales (Ruscino, Elne), portuaires (Collioure) et d’arrière-pays (Teixonères, xxx). Enfin, l’étude d’un lieu de culte gréco-romain (la Fajouse) permet d’expérimenter une archéologie des cultes afin d’aborder les comportements rituels, le paysage religieux et humain d’un espace montagnard situé au cœur des circulations terrestres entre la Gaule et l’Ibérie.

In 1877, Paul Schumacher shipped what he called a “treasure” of archaeological materials to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Known as “the Schumacher Collection,” the archaeological assemblage contains an unusually large quantity of Euro-American manufactured materials from human burials at the Tongva Village of Nájquqar (CA-SCaI-39) on Pimu Santa Catalina Island, California. Previous attempts at analyzing these rare cultural materials did not include interpretations of their meanings within the context of ethnohistorical and ethnographical information in California. Multiple lines of evidence from documentary sources and archaeological analysis suggest that the Tongva islanders, known ethnographically as the Pimu Tongva people, opportunistically acquired trade goods from Euro-American seafarers at the time of “first contact” in 1542 until their final removal from the island sometime after 1820. The ways in which the Pimu Tongva meaningfully integrated introduced materials into pre-existing cultural practices, reveal how a coastal Californian group continued to craft their own identity in the face of invasion.

This chapter examines the characteristics and consequences of African-European interactions in West Africa.  Emphasis is placed on the varied nature of the contact setting and the evaluation of culture change in African populations during the period of initial European contact, trade, and colonization.  Archaeological data, documentary sources, and oral traditions are used to evaluate transformations in African worldviews.  Although a general relationship between an expanding Eurocentric economic system and changing artifact inventories is recognized, inferences concerning the alteration of nonmaterial cultural systems are viewed as more difficult and challenging to asses.  Acknowledgement of the varied ways in which material remains represent cultures and their tropes, and how changes in shared beliefs or worldviews may be identified archaeologically, is seen as  fundamental to archaeologists' perceptions of the past.  These issues are highlighted by recent work at the site of Elmina in coastal Ghana.

By the end of the 18th century, the Haudenosaunee had been working and living with multiple European groups for over 250 years. Though they were adept at political negotiation, they were losing their ability to negotiate as an equal power or nation with Europeans and Euro-Americans. The Oneida Nation was an important negotiating unit in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy during this power struggle. The village of Oquaga was on the very southern fringes of Iroquois territory and thus a key town in the borderlands and frontier.  Oquaga was a firmly established Oneida town, but served as a refugee site for numerous Native groups including the Tuscarora, which symbiotically kept the rest of the Oneida communities further north safer within a buffer of refugee settlements. There are numerous primary source documents associated with Oquaga; these sources were analyzed to reconstruct the socio-political and physical landscape of late 18th century Oquaga. The content of each source was considered for what they relate about social and political relationships among Native and non-Native groups. The primary sources were coded using geographical and other place and people-related tags. These attributes were entered into a Microsoft Excel database.  As the attributes were entered into the database for each source, there were several similar themes in both the text and subtext observed between sources; after the attributes were sorted bundles of attributes became apparent (such as numerous mentions of an orchard, a specific house, a specific satellite village, the river, etc.). Those areas mentioned the most were then mapped in a GIS layer for each source, and then layered onto a contemporary map creating a resource for further archaeological research at Oquaga. The resulting map lays out where many of the Oquagan satellite villages were probably located, plus the location of additional potential features such the blockhouse and planting grounds.

Costume albums and books depicting the diverse peoples of the Ottoman Empire were produced by Ottomans and Europeans respectively as early as the sixteenth century, defining geography, ethnicity, religion, occupation, and gender in the Ottoman Empire through costume. Mobile objects, costume collections circulated through transimperial networks in the Mediterranean. Long understood as an enticing example of cross-cultural exchange, these costume compendia have nonetheless been interpreted in a lopsided way. Despite the early appearance of Ottoman produced
costume miniatures, most of the still embryonic writing on images of Ottoman costume assumes the priority of European print examples. But European artisans of the book were not without knowledge of Ottoman work: Ottoman-produced costume miniatures circulated in Europe beginning already in the sixteenth century, and increasingly through the seventeenth and especially eighteenth centuries. My essay explores how a consideration of the materiality of the costume book and album – specifically texture, touch, and the practice of hand-coloring – shapes a cross-cultural reading of them, a reading that is reinforced by early modern cultural
constructions of color, especially in relation to textile and dress. This investigation defines cultural mediation as layered, discontinuous, and resulting from a multiplicity of points of contact and exchange.

When people of different cultures interact, a degree of linguistic and/or cultural adaptation is expected. This paper examines the implication of the relationship between the Aari and the Gama for the naming practices of the former. The Aari people, who speak Araf, came into contact with Amharic-speaking migrants from central and northern Ethiopia (collectively called the Gama) during the southward expansion of Emperor Menelik in the late nineteenth century. Traditionally, the Aari people used names to express their collective history, shared life experiences, major events, and their environment. The incorporation of Aariland into the Ethiopian empire led to economic, political, and cultural domination as well as resistance on the part of the Aari. Personal names that characterize the period of struggle against the dominant migrants became common until the 1974 revolution that ended the Gama hegemony. Afterwards, however, the naming tradition suffered a setback as evidenced in the decline of Aari personal names in favour of Amhara names and the alteration of the spelling and pronunciation of Aari names. The new changes in naming practices compromised the role of the Aari language as an expression of culture and a marker of identity.

This article considers aspects of the maritime history of northern Australia from the perspective of the Aboriginal artists who documented their experiences in rock paintings. Aboriginal association with outsiders and the consequent introduction of foreign objects and knowledge is reflected in a number of ‘historical paintings’ or ‘contact art’, depicting an array of introduced, non-Indigenous subjects and themes. Maritime vessels are the predominant subject of that contact art, attesting to the importance of sea-faring vessels as defining symbols of the technology and culture of foreigners. I deal here with a dozen examples of Aboriginal maritime art in the Mount Borradaile/Cooper Creek area, north of Gunbulanya (Oenpelli), on the western fringe of Arnhem Land. I ask what evidence can be deduced from these paintings, and whether it is possible to construe and articulate some sense of meaning in this imagery that might illuminate our understanding of the contact history of this region.

The study of glass trade beads has contributed much to our chronological understanding of the colonial period in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. Indeed, this class of artifact has allowed archaeologists to identify and conduct research at important archaeological sites that never appeared in the European historical record. In the Southeast, the best chronological resolution established by current bead chronologies relates either to sixteenth- to mid-seventeenth-century Spanish-traded bead assemblages or eighteenth-century French-traded bead assemblages. There is a conspicuous gap, however, in glass bead chronologies associated with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English-Indian trade in the Southeast. In this paper, I address this gap by characterizing a large sample of trade beads (n = 35,309) found in individual mortuary assemblages recovered from a number of Southeastern Indian sites. This is the first time a regional synthesis of this scale has been conducted for the English colonial period in the Southeast. In order to begin to refine the bead chronology of this period, I also present the results of a quantitative seriation (using a technique known as correspondence analysis) of the same mortuary assemblages. While the results of this exploratory technique represent a preliminary stage in this process, they nevertheless identify a number of temporal trends that can be used to derive occupation date estimates for sites spanning the English colonial period in the Southeast (ca. 1607–1783).

This paper describes European trade goods from the Cherokee settlement at the Coweeta Creek site, located in the Appalachian Summit province of southwestern North Carolina, and compares this assemblage with those from the nearby Alarka and Tuckasegee sites. Most of the European trade goods from Coweeta Creek are associated with late stages of the public structure at the site, from nearby pit features, and from the plaza, and there are comparatively few trade goods from domestic areas around the plaza. Most of the domestic houses at Coweeta Creek were abandoned at the point at which European trade goods began to reach the settlement, or soon afterwards. The presence of European goods at Coweeta Creek, Alarka, and Tuckasegee demonstrates an early interest in and access to trade goods by Cherokee groups before the development of formal trade relations between Cherokee towns and the Carolina colony in the early eighteenth century.

As part of the VIDI 'Cultural innovation in a globalising society: Egypt in the Roman world', this PhD thesis explores manifestations of Egypt in the material culture of Augustan Rome. This period was a crucial turning point for the urban landscape of Rome, which was characterised by cultural diversity. Previous studies focus primarily on Greek influences on the development of Augustan material culture, while Egypt remains neglected or simply categorised as exoticism or Egyptomania. This research, in contrast, set out to investigate whether or not ‘Egypt’ constituted an integral part of Augustan material culture during this period. By comprising for the first time a comprehensive and interpretative overview of manifestations of Egypt in Augustan Rome –including public monuments, paintings, and architectural elements as well as pottery, gems, and jewellery from private contexts– a wide variety of case studies could be conducted, among which object reappraisals as well as new finds and contextual analyses were featured. By focusing on the archaeological data, this study demonstrates that Egypt was not an exotic Outsider in Rome, but constituted a remarkably diverse part of Roman material culture and the Augustan urban landscape, and was integrally part of the inherently flexible Augustan material culture repertoire.

Zusammenfassung:
Lange Zeit haben Wissenschaftler über die Funktion und Datierung der Goldkette von Isenbüttel, einem Altfund aus der Sammlung des Niedersächsischen Landesmuseums debattiert. Bislang waren keine Parallelen zu dieser Fuchsschwanzkette mit Tierkopfenden und Granatcloisonné bekannt. Ausgrabungen von angelsächsischen Friedhöfen der letzten Jahre haben einige Neufunde an Nadelpaaren mit Verbindungskette hervorgebracht, einem Objekttyp welcher vor allem in der zweiten Hälfte des 7. Jahrhunderts in England populär war. Diese Nadelpaare mit Verbindungskette stellen die besten Parallelen zur Goldkette von Isenbüttel dar und demonstrieren weitreichende Verbindungen innerhalb der frühmittelalterlichen Eliten.

This paper examines the changes in settlement patterns, internal trade relations and material culture that occurred in Philistia and the Shephelah during the Iron I–II transition. It appears that the Philistines were hegemonic during the Iron Age I. They lived in large fortified settlements, accompanied by smaller settlements
in the coastal areas. The Shephelah was only sparsely settled at the time, probably as a result of Philistine policy. Since it was to their advantage to maintain high boundaries with their neighbours, the Philistines increased their use of ‘foreign’ elements in their material culture. The Philistines were significantly weakened during the transition to the Iron Age IIA, with many sites becoming
significantly smaller and others abandoned. As the Philistines withdrew westward, the Shephelah was gradually filled with new Israelite/Judahite settlements. In tandem with their weakening, the Philistines changed their boundary maintenance strategy, and in a quick process of cultural change, abandoned many of the foreign traits that previously characterised them. Instead, they adopted a local material vocabulary, symbolising that they had become ‘one of the neighbours’. The city of Gath is an exception: Philistine identity was negotiated there differently than in other sites in  Philistia.

Viet Khe Burial 2 yielded not only the largest boat-shaped coffin, but also the most abundant mortuary objects among the boat-shaped coffin burials of the Bronze Age Dong Son Culture in Vietnam. A group of exotic bronze wares unearthed from Viet Khe Burial 2, including a tripod pot, spouted vessel, bell, sword, spearhead, ring-ended handle paring knife, and scraping knife, were previously misidentified and can now be identified as artifacts of the Yue Culture of southern China. This discovery is significant in terms of exploring the relationship between the Dong Son and Yue cultures. We suggest that the exotic bronzes originated from the Wuyue and Baiyue cultural areas, and the burial could thus be cross-dated to between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.After looking into the Yue bronzes of Viet Khe Burial 2 and other Yue bronze wares with Dong Son features found  in southern China, we would like to argue that there might exist direct contact and exchange between the Dong Son and Baiyue cultures, but there have been little possibility for cultural interaction between the Dong Son and Wuyue culture.

The possibility of intermarriage between Greek colonists and indigenous women has profound implications for the organisation of the colonial expeditions, the socio-political structure of the colonies, and their relations with the mother cities and indigenous populations. Unfortunately, this issue has been addressed using narrow datasets and ignoring theoretical advances in gender archaeology.  This paper takes a more comprehensive and contextualised approach to intermarriage by considering its historical implications in terms of gender roles, social expectations and power dynamics between Greek and indigenous populations.

Over the last decade, archaeologists have applied the term hybridity to interpret contexts of mixed material culture, and it has become a ubiquitous buzzword in the study of colonial situations. But does postcolonial hybridity (sensu Bhabha) differ from traditional explanations of cultural blend? Or is it simply (another) trendy lingo? Besides, the very notion of hybridity in postcolonial studies means politics in its most pure sense, but archaeologists have focused instead on social identities and cultural change, that have been at the forefront of the debate. In this paper I consider the implications of this concept to operationalize an ‘archaeology of hybridity’, testing its viability in two different milieus. In so doing, I compare the Phoenician impact in South Iberia and the Greek influence in South Etruria between the 9th-6th centuries BC through the analysis of funerary rituals and architecture.

“Robert Park’s Marginal Man: The Career of a Concept in American Sociology,” in The Anthem Companion to Robert Park, ed. Peter Kivisto (New York: Anthem Press, 2017), 159–180.

An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Laboratorium, 2012, vol. 4, no. 2: 199– 217.

Several years before English settlements at Roanoke and Jamestown, Spanish colonists traversed the western edge of the North Carolina Piedmont, and they attempted to establish permanent settlements in the upper Catawba and Yadkin river valleys. Archaeologists attribute sites and artifacts dating from A.D. 1400 to 1600 in the Western Piedmont to the Burke phase, which is best known from sites in the upper Catawba Valley. This paper summarizes current knowledge about the Burke phase, and about encounters and interactions between Native Americans and Spanish conquistadores and colonists in the North Carolina Piedmont during the sixteenth century. From 1540 to 1568, the Western Piedmont formed the northern edge of the Spanish colonial province of La Florida, and before 1540, the Western Piedmont formed a frontier between South Appalachian Mississippian societies to the south and west, and Piedmont Village Tradition societies to the north and east.

The concept of contacts zones, as developed in Ulf 2009, employs differentiating factors to embed the actors involved in the transfers of goods and ideas in their cultural and socio-political environments. Power exerted between people who transfer goods and ideas and those who receive them, is decisive for how receptivity is shaped by their recipients. To discover where power is situated in the complex processes of intercultural interactions, this paper leads attention to the societal characteristics that have an impact on the cultural actors. Referring to the change from the Greek enoikismoi within the scattered settlements of the local population(s) in the hinterland between the Gulf of Taranto and Brindisi to the emergence of recognizable Greek settlements along the coastline from the 8th to the 7th century BC, the example of the feast is chosen to highlight the accompanying change of the scale of power and its exertion. In the terminology of contact zones, a dense contact zone lacking a dominant partner turns into a Middle Ground. From the definition of the various contact zones derives, that the receptivity changed from free adaptation of so far unknown cultural elements to their own intentions and needs to conscious and intentional misunderstandings of the other’s cultural forms and behaviour to gain advantage over the exchange partner. Thus power is a growing factor in their relationship and becomes the more important when the Middle Ground is replaced by a dense zone of contact where one partner is able to dominate. Thereby, it becomes clear that the relationships in cultural transfers are not tied up with ethnic conditions or cultural superiority and inferiority, but determined by the type of contact zones which in turn are characterized by the tools of power involved.

The importance of migrations in archaeological studies has varied over time. New theoretical models focus on the processes behind human mobility and the migrant–indigenous interactions during a contact situation. A central concept in the early contact situations between two equally powerful groups is the middle ground. In this a common ground is created from the attempts of both sides to adjust their own actions to fit into the assumed world view of the others and persuade the other side that the shared actions that they perform together are legitimate and fair. Over time these create new shared customs and traditions that are the foundation of the new intermixed populations.

In this work the study of migrations focuses on the Kärsämäki type cemeteries from the Roman period onwards. The proposed Germanic migration to the coastal region of Finland Proper has been seen in the large number of new types of cemeteries that were established during the Early Roman Period, but these also have features that are local or Baltic in origin. Therefore it is probable that these cemeteries do not only feature elements from one ethnic group, but from many. It is plausible that the migrants and local population began to intermix from the very first stages of their contact. This can be seen in the later development of the sites and the adoption of the cremation cemeteries under level ground could have been the result of a long period of intermixing, but in some sites the older traditions were still being upheld even during the Migration and Merovingian Periods.

The incentives to move to Finland Proper were probably the changes in climatic and social conditions during the Roman Period. The information of the resources and opportunities from Finland would have accumulated with the help of older contact networks across the sea. The later development between Sweden and Finland diverged as the local conditions in Finland enabled a more varied subsistence strategy than agriculture alone. Due to this the deterioriation of climatic conditions would have had smaller impact in Finland than in other regions. However, the larger developments in Europe had more direct impact on Finland as the flow of trade goods would have been severely disrupted during extended periods of warfare, like the 3rd century crisis.

The paper presents the circumstances of the appearance and early reception of “Croatian Tales of Long Ago” in the English-speaking world, and discusses the endurance of these tales, primarily in the British culture. Their reception in other cultures is briefly described. The book consists of original literary fairy tales related to Slavic mythology and folklore, genuinely created and masterly told by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. She wrote a number of pieces for children and young adults, two of which are international children’s classics. Her works have kept their freshness and appeal to the present day.

Tomb C1 at Tel 'Eton (Israel) is a unique Iron I elite burial cave (excavated in 1968 by Gershon Edelstein). The finds include many metal artifacts, seals, beads, and dozens of ceramic vessels, including a group of Philistine bichrome pottery. While in the past some interpreted the finds as reflecting Philistines occupation at Tel 'Eton, the accumulated data regarding the ethnic composition of the region and the cultural significance of various objects suggest that the interred were members of the indigenous Canaanite elite. When combining the current understanding of intercultural interaction in the region during Iron I, and the available knowledge of similar processes elsewhere, the present study aims to reexamine this tomb and the associated finds. This will enable us to gain new insights into the interaction between the various groups that inhabited the region, on internal developments within the Canaanite society, and on the nature of local responses to colonialism.

This paper employs a practice-based framework for investigating early Mississippian period culture contact and identity negotiation in the Central Illinois River Valley (CIRV) through the lens of foodways. The Eveland phase (A.D. 1100 1200) was a setting of significant cultural change as a result of the movement of Cahokian people, objects, and ideas into the region. Recent analysis of excavated materials from the Lamb site in the southern portion of the CIRV affords a closer look at this historical process. Using ceramic and pit feature data, I assess Cahokian influence on traditional Late Woodland era culinary practices. I conclude that although local residents were actively adopting some aspects of Mississippian culture (including Cahokia potting traditions), they retained traditional Late Woodland organizational practices of cooking, serving, and storing food. By placing the organization of foodways at the center of this study, this paper illuminates another dimension of Cahokian contact in the region.

Im Jahre 1933 wurde bei Altenstadt in der Wetterau ein aus vier Steinbeilen und eventuell einer Feuersteinklinge bestehender jungneolithischer Depotfund entdeckt, der 1945 beim Brand des Glaubergmuseums großenteils zerstört wurde. Die 1939/40 erfolgte Abformung der Stücke im RGZM und ihre zeichnerische Dokumentation in den Inventarbüchern erlaubt es, den Komplex hier erstmals korrekt zu rekonstruieren und einen ersten Rekonstruktionsversuch aus dem Jahr 1991 zu widerlegen. Während drei heute nicht mehr vorhandene Beile sehr wahrscheinlich aus alpiner Jade bestanden, ist das einzige im Original erhaltene Beil aus einem sedimentären Gestein gefertigt, unter Umständen aus einer Grauwacke. Weitere Informationen zur Zusammensetzung des Depotfunds und zu den Beilen liefern historische Fotos aus der Zeit vor 1945, die unlängst von privater Seite dem Heimat- und Geschichtsverein Glauburg übergeben wurden.